Archinect - News

MASS Design Group, Minneapolis to be honored by UPenn's Weitzman School

2021-11-18T17:04:00-05:00

MASS Design Group will be honored alongside the city of Minneapolis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Weitzman School of Design in a public celebration held at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy this evening.

The Boston-based firm will receive the prestigious Kanter Tritsch Medal for its “design excellence and commitment to a climate-positive future.”

Likewise, Minneapolis is being honored with the Witte-Sakamoto Family Medal for its comprehensive 2040 resiliency plan that was developed with the help of Buro Happold.

“MASS and Minneapolis remind us of the central role for design in overcoming seemingly intractable challenges like unequal access to jobs and housing, and mass incarceration,” Weitzman dean Frederick Steiner said in a statement. “Our professions have a lot of work to do to see that entire communities aren’t left out of the design process.”

The non-profit, non-...

Dominique Perrault presented with the 2015 Praemium Imperiale gold medal for architecture

2015-10-21T18:15:00-04:00

Following last month's announcement, Dominique Perrault was presented with the 2015 Praemium Imperiale Arts Award medal for architecture during a formal ceremony today in Tokyo. Comparable to the Nobel Peace Prize, the prestigious award celebrates extraordinary achievement in the fields of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Music and Theatre/Film.

In recent years, the prize was awarded to Steven Holl, David Chipperfield, Henning Larsen, Ricardo Legorreta, Toyo Ito, Zaha Hadid, and Peter Zumthor, to name a few.

Alongside Perrault, the Praemium Imperiale medals were also presented to four notable cultural figures: Japanese-born British pianist Mitsuko Uchida; French ballerina Sylvie Guillem, German sculptor Wolfgang Laib, and graphic designer and artist Tadanori Yokoo. The 2015 Grant for Young Artists award (5 million yen) will go to Myanmar's Yangon Film School (headquartered in Berlin).

In addition to the specially-designed gold medals, the laureates received a testimonial letter f...

Obama touts Chicago architecture, Pritzker family in Pritzker Architecture Prize speech.

2011-06-03T11:51:11-04:00

Referring to Tom Pritzker, Obama said, "Now, as Tom mentioned, my interest in architecture goes way back. There was a time when I thought I could be an architect, where I expected to be more creative than I turned out, so I had to go into politics instead."